Tag Archives: environment

Tequila sunrise

Posted on July 30, 2013 by | 2 comments

Hi readers. Thanks for coming by for a read this morning.

Old Ms. Niaid managed to off Brother Rattler without any consequences evidently, so she’s going to have to find something else to flesh out her life experience, I reckons. Her long hair’s growing back from the sheep shearing when the hot weather hit, and it’s filling up with beggar’s lice and grass burrs, which might serve to fend off whatever’s around here dangerous to aging bachelorette felines.

Ms. Tabby, on the other hand, has a nose and front-of-her-face of the usual Tabby-summertime variety. Can’t keep her nose out of cactus, or out of the business of something capable of adding color and romance to an otherwise nondescript Tabby face. I’m thinking when we get out of here she might turn out to be a regular-looking cat.

I decided yesterday I’m going to add mothballs to that storage building to get those rattlers out where they can enjoy life instead of bickering and snarling inside that dark storage building. Can’t tell when someone’s going to want something else out of there and the anxiety level trying to find it ain’t worth not stepping on a snake some night going from the RV to the cabin to check my email.

Today I’m going to nurse the Escape Route V 2.51 into Kerrville on three tires on back and have the two blown ones replace with respectable 10 ply exceptions to the rule. Provided the spare on the ground right-rear doesn’t decide to blow the plan. I’ll try to take back roads and get the roadwork done early before the pavement gets too hot.

Keith emailed me a while back he’s planning to be in New Mexico late August or September, and I’m going to tentatively plan on getting out to visit while he’s in the area. Hopefully by then everything will be settled out here and I’ll be able to think of out-there as home for a while.

Maybe get me a nice little piece of ocean-side ground on the east, or west coast of New Mexico, once all the damned ice goes away and raises sea-level to a reasonable altitude. 4000′ mean sea level might be about right. Maybe the cats and I will open a little bait shop on the west coast near where Arizona used to be. Or maybe rig a surfboard and hang ten mornings after we pray the sun up.

I figure the west coast will probably be less jam packed with Arizonians than the east coast will be with Texans because those Texans already all go to New Mexico deliberately to ski and gamble at Ruidoso and Angel Fire. Arizonians and Californians never go to New Mexico deliberately unless they’re just going through it to get somewhere else.

By the time they wake up and discover they’re living in a salt-water swimming hole I’ll have things nailed down on all the corners, wave to them as they swim to shore, or ride in on their bass boats. Sell them some bait, maybe.

Big plans for the future here.

Old Jules

2 Comments

Posted in 2013, America, Country Life, Gambling, Homesteading, Human Behavior, Kerrville, Nature, New Mexico, NM, Outdoors, Solitude

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Pore old Brother Rattler

Posted on July 29, 2013 by | 7 comments

Hi readers. Thanks for coming by for a read.

Gale had a hip replaced recently, and he’s doing the recovery routines. Called me a few days ago asking me to search around in one of the storage buildings for a wheel chair and walkers stored in there somewhere. I used to store chicken feed in there and hadn’t looked inside much after I got rid of the flock.

So I opened the door and began clearing away all manner of things before the first rattler announced himself, followed by another somewhere on the other side of the path I was creating. I moved something else and a third, maybe a fourth kicked in to the orchestra.

I tippee-toed around and carefully got the wheel chair and walkers out without anything attaching itself to my leg, called him to let him know it’s all down here where it can be picked up. We discussed the plethora of rattlers, how to get them out of there. And whether I actually wanted to get them out of there before I’m ready to hit the pavement.

On reflection, I like them a good bit better in there than outdoors where they can get underfoot. My thought is I’ll leave them to themselves for a while if they’re happy there. When the time comes he can run them out with mothballs or ammonia. He’s thinking he’d like to try forcing them out the hole they came in and have people standing around to shoot them as they emerge. Which I want no part of. I mostly have no argument with pore old Brother Rattler. If he’ll leave me along I’m content leaving him alone, tending his own affairs.

However, half-hour ago I was inside the RV when Niaid announced she’d come on prey, or caught something. I looked out the screen door and watched her leap on something in the weeds. Quicker than I can tell it she had a 3 foot rattler in her mouth dragging it toward the RV, meowing out the sides of her mouth as she came.

Brother Rattler was still trying to grasp the fact he was dead, his head and neck squashed. Squirming and wiggling between her forelegs as she brought him to show off.

I’m keeping a close eye on her. No way of telling yet whether she was bitten, but she seems okay. Not favoring any body parts.

Life in the big city, I reckons.

Old Jules

7 Comments

Posted in 2013, America, Animals, Country Life, Homesteading, Human Behavior, Nature, Senior Citizens, Texas

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Fad science and self-made a monkeyof-ism

Posted on July 27, 2013 by | 12 comments

Hi readers. Thanks for coming by.

Some of you thought I was joking with my recent post about climate change and the current yakyakyakyak by the excitement industry concerning ‘manmade global warming’.

Some of you probably also didn’t notice the comment by Trapper Gale remembering a time four-or-so decades ago when the previous generation of the same institutional experts ran in increasingly small circles setting their hair on fire predicting a coming ice age.

AmericaLaurentideIceSheet.jpg

http://earthguide.ucsd.edu/virtualmuseum/climatechange2/01_1.shtml

http://earthguide.ucsd.edu/virtualmuseum/images/AmericaLaurentideIceSheet.jpg

“The last of the ice ages in human experience (often referred to as the Ice Age) reached its maximum roughly 20,000 years ago, and then gave way to warming. Sea level rose in two major steps, one centered near 14,000 years and the other near 11,500 years. However, between these two periods of rapid melting there was a pause in melting and sea level rise, known as the “Younger Dryas” period. During the Younger Dryas the climate system went back into almost fully glacial conditions, after having offered balmy conditions for more than 1000 years. The reasons for these large swings in climate change are not yet well understood. “

Which is an understatement.

Academians have a vested interest in manmade climate change today. They get their names in the journals and newspapers through the power of positive speaking. If they can stir up enough fear by presenting what they don’t know as ‘not yet well understood’ they generate government grants, jobs, power and prestige within their fields. Further study of what they don’t yet well understand, it’s assumed, will provide better understanding in the direction of their assertions.

Somehow the fact their disciplinary ancestors also didn’t yet well understand similarly the precise opposite interpretation of the data. Mined it for all it was worth at the time in study, grants, power and prestige. Opened new frontiers for their progeny when the time came, by reversing what a few decades later remained not yet fully understood.

I’m not suggesting there’s no manmade climate change. Maybe there is. And I’m not suggesting that if there is, it won’t speed the natural progress of planetary warming.

What I am saying is that anytime scientific observers examine data with an expected, hoped-for outcome, [especially when power, money, career advancement and prestige are factors] they have a way of observing selectively.

Same as human beings are prone to do in all other walks of life.

What I’m also saying is that three, maybe four decades from now there’s a reasonable possibility they’ll have mined this crisis dry and be setting their hair on fire with a new crisis to be mined for power, prestige, money and career advancement. Humanity induced plate tectonics, maybe. Earth’s decaying orbit because of atmospheric drag created by airliners.

Maybe they’ll be right. Hell, there’s even a remote chance they’re right about of what they’re saying today. Some piece of it-or-other.

The damned problem is you can’t trust them. They watch the same television you do. They know which way the wind’s blowing and muddling along trying to sail downwind getting the most out of it while it’s hot. Joining the gold rush with the knowledge when this one plays out there’s another lode in Alaska or Nevada they can move to.

Same as the rest of us.

Old Jules

12 Comments

Posted in 1970's, 2013, America, Current Issues, Education, Government, Grants, Human Behavior, Nature, Outdoors, Science, Survival

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Climate Change – A matter of perspective

Posted on July 26, 2013 by | 15 comments

Morning to you, readers. Thanks for coming by for a read this morning.

Now that the planet’s finally recovering from that last ice age, all the glaciers and permafrost finally melting, maybe things can get back to normal, the way things used to be in the good old days.  All that ice covering things up has been one hell of an inconvenience.

We’re lucky to live now instead of a while back when the Great Lakes were covered by half-mile of ice.  But things are getting better, just as they’ve been getting better all along as the ice receded.  Imagine how tough it would have been for all those automotive manufacturers to turn out cars if Detroit had been under half-mile of ice.  And those super-highways?  Heck, how do you build an Interstate on top of melting ice?  Same with all sorts of other things we spent the past few centuries doing.

Sure, things are going to change when things get back to normal.  And nobody can guess what those changes are going to be, how a normal climate’s going to manifest itself.  Nobody who lived during normal times was writing anything much down about the situation at the time. 

But the good news is that the planet goes a longish while between ice ages usually.  So once things are back to normal folks living then will have all kinds of time to get used to it.  Besides, they’ll be busy as hell working to pay off the debts the people living today are promising they’ll pay.  Maybe they’ll find some new ways of doing it in places where the ground’s covered with ice.

Running around screaming and setting our hair on fire isn’t going to keep this planet from doing what it’s going to do.  Those glaciers are going to keep receding.  No stopping it.

And there aren’t any laws, any human behaviors anyone’s going to change to keep it from doing it.  Any more than humans before this ice age came along could have done anything to keep it from happening.

Might as well relax and enjoy it.  The forward thinkers will find ways to make money from it, get rich off it one way or another.  The stainless steel agers will find ways to exploit whatever’s been hidden under all that ice.

Cultures, religions and civilizations will rise and fall, same as they always have.  Everyone will think it’s perfectly normal.

Nothing to get excited about.

Old Jules

15 Comments

Posted in 2013, America, Education, Emergency Preparedness, Government, Human Behavior, Science, Survival

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The Smallpox People Project

Posted on July 18, 2013 by | 4 comments

The Whale and Dolphin People Project got me talking it over with the topcat around here.

http://thewhaleanddolphinpeopleproject.org/

Me:  So, Hydrox, what’s your thinking on this thing of trying to save dolphins and whales by making people of them?

Hydrox:  Does it concern you at all that if dolphins and whales began behaving like humans there wouldn’t be room in the oceans for any other species?

Me:  Hell Hydrox.  You know better than that.  They’d starve.

Hydrox:  Think about it a minute now.  Try the perspective of a domestic cat.  Back earlier than I can recall you cut my chorizos off so’s I wouldn’t be a part of what human beings think of as a cat-over population-problem.  Same with the rest of that litter.  When you protected all those chickens, both back in Y2K, and later here, killing coons, coyotes, skunks, you got an over-population problem.  Meanwhile you humans, during my own feline lifetime, have possibly doubled your population.  Does that tell you anything?

Me:  I think I see where you’re going with this.  What you aren’t taking into account is that we value human life.  We don’t believe in going around cutting the nuts off human beings and clipping the whatchallits of our females.  We rely on disease, war, hunger and other natural causes to keep our population down.

Hydrox:  Does it occur to you that the natural forces aren’t doing the job?  That the reason dolphins and whales need to be made into people so you can’t kill them legally might be going backward into the problem instead of approaching it head-on?  For instance, if you really want to save those whales protecting them from humans by calling them humans would be a lot less likely to actually save them than calling Bubonic, Ebola, Cholera and whatever other disease you can invent ‘people’ and protecting them.  Get rid of all those damned shots and pills and the whales will do fine just being whales. 

Me:  You’re saying …. hmm.  You’re saying make diseases PEOPLE?

Hydrox:  Actually I’m not.  If you change the wording around a bit you’ll see what I’m saying about what’s a disease.  Heck, if you could just find a disease that would kill off heart surgeons and fast food workers you could take care of a huge part of the problems of dolphins and whales through starvation and heart failures.  Whale and dolphin people my ass!  Tell those folks they’re human, convince them of it, and they’ll be beaching themselves into extinction!  Maybe that’s already what’s causing them to beach themselves to death.  Someone told them they’re people and they believed it. 

Me:  Seems to me we’ve got a failure here somewhere, to communicate.

Old Jules

4 Comments

Posted in 2013, America, Animals, Education, Government, Human Behavior, Science

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Gloobal cooling terror

Posted on July 18, 2013 by | 4 comments

Good morning readers.

Thanks for coming by for a read this morning. Temps dropped unseasonably a couple of days ago and had enough intermittent rainfall to get the neighbor out burning all the trees he’d knocked down and piled up since the last one. 

I’d been fooling around with one of the longtime experiments of the Burt Lancaster/Kate Hepburn in the Rainmaker movie, so naturally I accepted that I’d made it all happened without having to argue with logic, the Universe, or modern science about the matter.

But the overwhelmingly satisfying result of it all was the cats moving indoors.  They’re not big on rain, not big on gloobal warming.  Naturally a twist to gloobal cooling was to their liking.  Tabby slept purring occasionally with her nose in my armpit last night, which is a major step in the right direction, both in matters of laundryism, and matters of Tabby coming back into the tribe.

If the mud’s not too bad I’ll be tripping to town for groceries today and might actually squeeze in another laundry trip.  Heck, if it works and I load the tank with water before I come back I might have three cats arguing for the armpit position.  Have to grow another arm for the duration of the gloobal cooling crisis.

Old Jules

4 Comments

Posted in 2013, America, Animals

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The illusion of progress

Posted on July 5, 2013 by | 12 comments

Escape route 2.51Good morning readers. Thanks for coming by for a read this morning.

Old Sol’s having to fight his way through a lot of haze this morning.   The residue of patriotic zeal, most likely.  I’m not seeing it in the western sky, so I’m guessing someone between here and Harper managed to set the world on fire with a Chinese firework, or Chinese-manufactured US flag waving in the wrong dry grass.  But the Far Departments in this part of Texas know how to deal with such things and likely they’re used to them.

Incidently, for those interested, the Invader Cat turns out not to be defunct.  Re-emerged a couple of days ago l0oking sleek and fat, minus the damaged eye and skull on that side.  Treating himself as though he’s part of the program here.

Meanwhile, Tabby’s still refusing to enter the RV, though she’s being sociable enough, otherwise.  I picked up some more un-flavored Chinese sardines at Dollar Tree in Kerrville early in the week figuring to try luring her into accustoming herself to it.  If that doesn’t succeed, I’ll have to resort to starvation as the next instrument of persuasion.

It’s time I began feeding them all in there, anyway, if only to encourage the Invader Cat to go back where it is someone’s feeding him.

Went to the laundry in Kerrville while I was in town, which was novel and uplifting.  Nice way to get clothes clean, when you think about it.  Sat around in there watching the odor of unwashed clothing being replaced by a white tornado turned sideways.  Listened to people discuss how hot it is, how dry it is, and got a bit of reading done.

Went around to the various oil-change and lube people and found the ones with the best deals for oil changes and lubes at the moment have doors too low to allow the RV inside.  Even WalMart.  But there are a couple of the QuickLube, JiffyLube types of places I haven’t tried yet.

Before I left here I loaded up the RV with belongings to be taken to storage in Harper, which is the illusion of progress I mentioned at the beginning.  I’ll have a number more of those trips before I hit the road.

Swung by one of the side streets lured by a sign, “FRESH PEACHES” while I was in Harper and ended talking chickens to the lady selling them.  Nice coming across someone who likes chickens as much as I do.

There’s an old RV behind a house near Harper about the same vintage as this one, looks as though it hasn’t been moved in years.  I looked at it through binoculars to see whether the ladder was intact [the one on this one’s going to have to be replaced], then knocked a while at the door.  Finally left a note asking whether they’d be interested in selling the ladder.

If they get back in touch with me there’s another item or two I might also be able to buy off that one…. another piece of the illusion of progress.

But sometimes progress manages to be just marching in place.  I’m hearing from Rich and Jeanne that the hot and dry out west is severe enough to justify stalling until something breaks with the heat and moisture.  New Mexico and Arizona are either in the process of burning, or getting ready to burn.  I’m not crazy about putting the kinds of stresses on the tires and drive-train going across pavement hot enough to fry an egg on will provide.

Maybe in a few weeks it will be more inviting.

Old Jules

12 Comments

Posted in 2013, America

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Getting nasty old Brother Coon safely into the past

Posted on June 21, 2013 by | 13 comments

tabby asleep outdoors3

Although I don’t believe I’ve come right out and said so, I’ve been keeping a close eye on the felines since June 9th when old Brother Coon made his debut.  Even though I’m not inclined to think he was sick, it’s not easy to reconcile with my past experience with wild animals.  If it weren’t for the single episode a year or two ago when Hydrox and I stood off a somewhat aggressive coon [described somewhere on this blog] I’d be more concerned.

But even so, I don’t trust this last one.  In 70 years of being around wild critters this qualifies as the first time I’ve ever been attacked by one, even though I’ve been in close woods-proximity to a lot of them including bears and cougars.  Always was able to stand off the bears without any increase in heartbeat rates and the cougars never had much interest in me.

But when I consider how big I must have looked to old Brother Coon I can’t help thinking this incident might involve something wrong with his thinker.

And as I’ve describe on some other recent posts, Tabby’s been acting uncharacteristally stand-offish, paranoid, etc.  Usually I wouldn’t be much bothered by that, because Tabby’s a cat with a long history of behavioral changes, more-or-less when the wind changes.

She seems healthy enough even though she barely comes to the porch for food and definitely doesn’t want any attention, affection, etc.  This morning she only spent a few minutes up here eating dry cat food then headed off across the meadow to sit staring back.  I took some canned food out there and she devoured it, but didn’t encourage me to scratch her behind the ears or stroke her.

I gave her what she wanted without any arguments.

Today’s June 21 and the Great Coon Incident happened June 9.  I’ll return to being insistent with Tabby when two weeks have passed, assuming she’s not foaming at the mouth or wobbling on her hind legs.

Old Jules

13 Comments

Posted in 2013, America, Animals, Outdoors

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The planetary hurricane plague cry for mitigation

Posted on June 21, 2013 by | 10 comments

Good morning readers.  Thanks for coming by for a read this morning.

You won’t be seeing this anywhere else because of the conspiracy of silence and the failure of global governments to take responsibility for what man is doing to screw up the weather on the planet Venus.

Mystery on Venus: ‘Super-Hurricane’ Force Winds Inexplicably Get Stronger

http://weather.yahoo.com/mystery-venus-super-hurricane-force-winds-inexplicably-stronger-104226704.html

The howling, hurricane-force winds of Venus are blowing even faster lately, and scientists aren’t sure why.

Average cloud-top wind speeds on Venus rose 33 percent between 2006 and 2012, jumping from 186 mph (300 km/h) to 249 mph (400 km/h), observations by Europe’s Venus Express orbiter show.

“This is an enormous increase in the already high wind speeds known in the atmosphere,” Igor Khatuntsev of the Space Research Institute in Moscow said in a statement. “Such a large variation has never before been observed on Venus, and we do not yet understand why this occurred.”

If you’re like me you’re naturally deeply concerned about this claim it’s not yet understood.  What’s happening on Venus is plainly and simply the result of something else man’s doing.  Attempting to shirk responsibility is merely an attempt to avoid changing our behaviors causing it.  Whatever it is that man is doing to cause those winds on Venus to skyrocket needs to be identified, then curtailed.

We owe it to ourselves, and we owe it to the solar system to recognize that anything unexpected happening on a planetary scale anywhere can’t help being a consequence of something human beings are doing.

Even though nobody understands the specifics of those Venus wind changes a good place to begin correcting it would be for people in Indonesia to put out those damned forest fires and quit playing with matches.  After that we need to reduce the size of the roofs on our dwellings and paint them black so’s they absorb sunlight instead of reflecting.

Likely it won’t do any good insofar as the wind speeds on Venus, but at least we’ll be doing something and will be able to feel better about ourselves.

Remember where you heard it first.

Old Jules

10 Comments

Posted in 2013, Astronomy

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Macho Robbing High-Tech Living

Posted on June 19, 2013 by | 14 comments

RV x 2

If you’re like me most of you probably already know there’s something counter-frontiersman, counter-pioneer about just pushing a button to kick on a pump, then stepping inside a little room to have a hot, pressurized shower.  Washing dishes in a sink with hot water instead of putting them upside down over a fire-ant bed and just wiping them down after the ants do their work.

Like me, you probably feel a lot of guilt, something vaguely counter-natural, counter-human when you indulge in this type of behavior.

But yesterday and today I did.

And damn it felt good.  Probably do it again tomorrow and dwindle off some more macho.  I’m old enough to have some to spare that I would have needed for other things when I was younger.

Jules

14 Comments

Posted in 2013, Adventure, Senior Citizens, Solitude, Transportation, Trucks

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